Chapter 141 - Kindred Spirits
A standard combat field in an MMORPG. Anyone who has ever touched the genre would probably picture a similar scene.
Vast plains, deep forests, desolate wastelands, high mountains, even the bottom of the sea or above the clouds—a wide variety of maps, and scattered across them, hordes of cannon fodder (mobs).
You hunt them down one after another, and another wave of monsters respawns. You trade your finite resource of time to acquire their infinite resources... It's one of the quintessential pleasures that symbolizes the MMO genre.
In that sense, you could say Arcadia is not very MMO-like. After all, in this game, you'll rarely encounter a monster just by wandering around aimlessly.
There are special enemies with somewhat fixed spawn locations, like the [White-Shining Bird of Fortune] we hunted down a while back.
But they are extremely few. Basically, almost all monsters don't have a fixed spawn point—in fact, their habitats themselves can sometimes change.
A good example is the great forest surrounding the Safe Area.
You'd think such a vast forest would be teeming with monsters, right? Surprisingly, there's almost nothing in that forest.
Of course, it wasn't always that way. In the past, the great forest—nicknamed simply 'The Great Forest'—was apparently home to a great number of monsters.
And then—the moment players who had cleared the [Trial Spheres of Partition] arrived at the Great Bell Tower sunken in the heart of the forest.
A great conflict erupted between the 'settlers' and the 'original inhabitants'.
Who was victorious? The answer is the current Safe Area and the silence that has fallen over The Great Forest.
In other words, the countless monsters had moved their homes, thinking, "What's with those freaks? We can't deal with this."
As this example shows, Arcadia doesn't have clear habitats or the hunting grounds that come with them. Well, they exist, but the reality is that there's nothing more than a rough guideline like, "You can probably hunt them if you go look around here."
If you gather information properly before heading out, you're almost guaranteed to find them, so it's not some terrible game design where "all monsters are rare enemies" and you can never find an encounter.
Still, as for the problem of "isn't it stressful not being able to fight constantly?"—
"—Sora, it's headed your way!"
"Which way is 'your way'!?"
"Wrong, that's a clone! Three o'clock!!"
"What time is three o'clock!?"
"You're too confused, calm down!!"
—The issue is resolved by the fact that the enemies appearing in this Garden of Divine Creation are all tough, tricky opponents. The demand is met not with quantity, but with quality.
And the [Misty Snake] currently plunging us into an ideal vortex of pandemonium in this bog where our footing is unstable is no exception.
It vanishes, it flees, it creates clones. To top it off, it scatters a wide-area poison mist and then goes into a thorough hide, a tactic that embodies the pinnacle of stealth, making it a real handful.
Having fought it before, I'm just observing for now, letting Sora-san try it alone first—haha, she's panicking.
Surrounded by countless giant snakes (clones) and in a state of mild panic, my partner has retreated into a defensive barrier of magic swords.
A swarm of innumerable tiny magic swords orbits her body at high speed.
There are too many to count, and though they're only the size of pebbles, their contained power and weight are no less than that of a full-sized sword.
If I were to approach Sora now, I'd likely be minced in an instant.
"Ugh..."
It's not that she's in a pinch. The proof is that her HP hasn't dropped by a single millimeter, but she's simply at a loss for what to do.
When she looks at me with hesitant eyes, my unconditional soft spot for Sora makes me speak up without a moment's delay.
That said, I hesitated to just thoughtlessly tell her to "just smash it," so I decided to offer a hint for the fight instead.
"Sora, that thing can turn invisible. What you're seeing is basically all decoys."
There's no reason for the real one to show itself among the decoys, after all—and that is this bastard's fatal flaw.
"And the clones don't have a physical body... no mass. But of course, the main body does."
In other words, what she needs to look for isn't its 'form', but—
"I—I see!!"
Exactly. Sora's gaze lands on the answer she's just figured out—the end of the snake's path, drawn in the mud by its mass.
Of course, the [Misty Snake] is no fool. It cleverly weaves in numerous feints as it flees, doing its best to conceal its position.
In fact, it even uses the tracks left in the swamp to its advantage, trying to confuse us.
A certain player who once challenged it solo was apparently played for a fool in textbook fashion, ending up in a game of tag that lasted nearly an hour.
So the fact that Sora-san figured out the solution instantly with a single hint and brilliantly blew the [Misty Snake]'s head off with a single shot from her magic sword—well, I think there's something a little off about her.
"...! I did it!!"
"Hah, nice one."
But she's cute, so I don't care.
After confirming her own success, Sora spins around, a radiant smile blooming on her face.
Ignoring the massive, deep blue snake exploding behind her, my partner runs up to me happily, and we share a high-five. Her light touch, a soft pat, is so very her.
"How were the drops?"
"Um, one hide, two fangs, and... a poison gland? I got one of those!"
Oh, the poison gland is a slightly rare drop. I have no idea what it's used for, though.
"Alright then, we need three more hides... I got one every time I fought it, so it seems like a guaranteed drop."
"So that means three more to go?"
Having gotten the hang of it, she must be feeling confident. She nods at me, and my partner looks full of motivation, declaring, "I'll do my best!"
She's strong. I remember being exasperated, thinking, "Three more? You've got to be kidding me..." But I guess if she can dispatch them so cleanly, it's only natural.
"Alright, let's keep it moving."
"Yes! Ah, um, if you would, please!"
Okay, leave the scouting to me.
With a light wave, I leap into the sky and conduct a wide-area scan of the swamp with my avatar's superhuman vision—our snake hunt, which I have to admit was rather cheat-like, came to a close just over ten minutes later.
If I'm going to make the time, I have to write for that time, right?